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Updated
February 27, 2007
January 30, 2007
Spitzer’s Education Agenda Promises Aid Increase
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and DANNY HAKIM
The New York Times Company
ALBANY, Jan. 29 — Gov. Eliot Spitzer declared on Monday that he would propose a major increase in state aid for New York’s public schools in his first budget and would seek vastly expanded oversight of local school districts, including wide powers to remove school boards or force the dismissal of superintendents for repeated failures.
Laying out an expansive agenda in a speech at the State Education Department, Mr. Spitzer said he was proposing “the largest infusion of resources in our state’s history” but left a specific number for Wednesday, when he is to unveil his budget. Officials who have been briefed on the governor’s plans said he would propose $1.4 billion in added education spending statewide for the coming fiscal year, increasing to $7 billion in added annual spending after four years.
The largest share of that $7 billion — about $3.1 billion — would go to New York City. Combined with $2.2 billion in added city education spending over the next four years proposed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, city schools ultimately stand to gain $5.3 billion a year — a huge windfall even for a school district that already spends more than $15 billion a year.
“There will be no more excuses for failure,” Mr. Spitzer declared in his address. “The debate will no longer be about money, but about performance. The goal will no longer be adequacy, but excellence. And the timetable will no longer be tomorrow, but today.”
The proposal stretches far beyond an order by the State Court of Appeals late last year mandating at least $1.93 billion a year in additional school aid to New York City in its final ruling on a 13-year lawsuit over education financing. The state currently pays about $7.1 billion, or roughly 45 percent of New York City’s school budget.
“We strongly support the governor’s education plan,” said the city’s schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein.
In promising to comply with the court order, Mr. Spitzer had long pledged to provide similar increases for other needy districts statewide.
In doing so, he said, he would throw out what he called the state’s “byzantine and politically driven school aid formulas” and allocate money more closely tied to district needs. Most of the governor’s proposals will require the approval of the Legislature, where the Republican-led Senate has been resistant to a large increase in education funding and zealously protective of the way state education aid is divided.
To win over the Senate, Mr. Spitzer’s strategy is to pair education spending increases with a $6 billion property tax cut over three years, since slashing property taxes is a top priority of the Senate, which is dominated by upstate and suburban politicians.
“These issues are two sides of the same coin, which is why our new educational investment must be paired and enacted with our new $6 billion property tax relief plan,” the governor said on Monday.
At a press conference after the speech, Mr. Spitzer said he fully expected some opposition from the Legislature. “Does that mean there may be a battle?” he said. “You bet. It’s fine. We welcome it.”
John McArdle, a spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, was noncommittal. “We will react when we see the actual budget,” he said. Among other things, Senate Republicans are concerned about the school funding formula being changed in a way that would diminish the percentage of aid to upstate and suburban communities.
“The question is how he pays for it and how he distributes it,” Mr. McArdle said. He added, “We want to make sure no region is hurt or disadvantaged.”
Charles Carrier, a spokesman for the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, said, “We are supportive and look forward to meeting with the executive to discuss it in the coming weeks.”
While the governor’s speech was frequently punctuated by applause, Mr. Spitzer prompted an audible gasp and some boos from an audience of professional educators and Education Department staff members when he also called for an increase in the number of charter schools allowed under state law, to 250 from 100. “Oh, come on,” Mr. Spitzer teased the audience. His predecessor, Gov. George E. Pataki, failed to get the Legislature to lift the cap last year.
Mr. Spitzer’s plans for accountability measures will require the support of the Board of Regents, which sets state education policy, and the cooperation of local school districts. Under the proposal, districts that receive significant amounts of new money will have to sign performance contracts promising clear progress in raising student achievement, high school graduation rates and the number of students who attend college.
The governor said he would seek new powers for the Education Department, including the ability to require districts to dismiss superintendents “after substantial failure over multiple years” and even to remove entire school boards that “fail their communities year after year.” Currently, the state must get legislative approval to take over a failing district, and local officials can be removed only for misconduct, not for academic failure.
He said that principals and superintendents would be graded on new “school leadership report cards” and that the state should be prepared to close many more failing schools — as many as 5 percent of all schools statewide — using its existing authority.
In a call for better teacher preparation, Mr. Spitzer said the state should offer expanded alternative certification programs to increase the number of teachers entering the profession without traditional training. And he said it should set tougher requirements for teachers to earn tenure, including “qualitative information about how a teacher’s students perform over multiple years.”
Mr. Spitzer’s aggressive agenda included a wide expansion of prekindergarten throughout the state and a more sophisticated analysis of annual standardized test scores to track the year-to-year progress of individual students.
But the most far-reaching aspect of the governor’s plan, aside from the vast increase in spending, was his commitment to clear up the tangled thicket of state school aid formulas, which have long been derided as unfair and often subject to political manipulation.
Under the plan, school districts would receive most of their state school aid in a lump sum, through what is known as a “foundation formula,” rather than as individual allocations in dozens of different categories that provide different financing streams for programs like prekindergarten, special education or class-size reduction.
Mr. Spitzer said that any district receiving an aggregate increase of $15 million or 10 percent more than the prior year would be required to sign a “contract of excellence” setting forth rigorous performance requirements, including increasing the number of students proficient in reading and math and lifting high school graduation rates.
He said he would also require districts to increase the numbers of students attending college. “We must make sure having a high school diploma in New York means a student is ready for college and for the workplace,” Mr. Spitzer said.
He also said that local districts would not have unfettered control over how they spend the additional aid, but would be required to choose from a menu of state-approved initiatives, such as reducing class sizes and increasing the amount of time children spend in school, either through longer days, longer years, after-school programs or other changes in scheduling.
In his speech, Mr. Spitzer repeatedly stressed the need for accountability in education, but he also suggested that previous efforts including the federal No Child Left Behind law had fallen short. That law, he said, “sadly demonstrated that accountability without resources is a false,” he said. “But we also know that resources without accountability are a recipe for waste.”
At the press conference, Mr. Spitzer announced that he had hired Manuel Rivera, the superintendent in Rochester, as his chief education adviser. Mr. Rivera had recently accepted an offer to become the schools superintendent in Boston, but gave it up at Mr. Spitzer’s request. Mr. Rivera, who was named last year’s “superintendent of the year” by the American Association of School Administrators, is widely credited with bolstering Rochester’s struggling schools and avoiding the disastrous results that have befallen Buffalo, an urban district with similar economic woes.
“We are poised to begin implementing what may be the greatest reform agenda directly tied to the largest infusion of resources in our state’s history,” Mr. Spitzer said in his speech. “My vision for education reform is built on a single premise: To be effective, new funding must be tied to a comprehensive agenda of reform and accountability.”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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